I agree. Rory really hasn't ever gotten rejected. She got into Harvard, Princeton, and Yale. I know so many people who would kill for just one of those colleges. She faced rejection with Mitchum, but still, she hasn't every truly had her dream rejected, like, say, Paris and Harvard four years ago. I don't think the paper she was working on with Mitchum was her true dream. But I still can't help feeling bad.
Um, what???? The paper she was working on with Mitchum was not her true dream but that story thread wasn't about keeping an internship at that particular paper. It was about someone very important and experienced in the field she wanted to make her career telling her that he doubted she would be successful at it. If that's not rejection, I don't know what is! And if it had been so minor to her, I doubt she would have quit school over it.
When she got accepted at the Providence paper last week I was pretty sure she wasn't going to get the Reston -- I think they put that in to soften the blow and indicate that it's not like she won't have options.
As for this episode, I liked the L/L scenes and the Jackson/Sookie scenes. (Although I do think that Lorelei should have at least said thanks to Luke as he was walking away or something.) Also, I know I'm prejudiced because I've always found Paris too over the top to be believable but I disagree with others who have said that she was being considerate by waiting for Rory before she opened the envelopes. I think that had she thought she could handle the news, she would have opened them herself. I think that she was using Rory's absence to put off opening them because she was so nervous. I really hope she intends to be a surgeon because her bedside manner as a regular doctor is too appalling to contemplate; you'd have to pity her poor future patients :->